Young people are sorting themselves out without help from the hand-wringing elite

(GETTY IMAGES)

There was plenty in the jobs stats yesterday to get commentators and bloggers wringing their hands about our lost generation of young people. The stats also gave politicians and campaigners yet another chance to boot the political football labelled ‘youth’ – that’s the one that can be kicked around for decades without ever deflating.

The tone of the debate is very much that young people are the victims of a failing market needing endless help and support to get back on their feet. It overlooks the fact that increasingly the so-called millennials (people born between the early eighties and mid-nineties) are taking control of the market for themselves and making it work for them. There is growing evidence that this generation is deeply entrepreneurial and self-motivated.

A recent poll of Americans aged 18 to 34, for example, found that more than half would like to start their own firm or had already done so. A separate survey found that 35 per cent of people under 30 in employment had started their own business on the side. While a study of four million Facebook profiles for people aged between 18 and 29 concluded that the pages displayed an “unprecedented entrepreneurial spirit”.

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), working with the National Centre for Social Research, have tried to find out whether this was a new phenomenon or not by comparing large-scale surveys over the last decade-and-a-half in the UK. We discovered that the desire to start your own business has risen considerably amongst all age groups. However, the 20 to 29 age group in both 1998 and 2010 was the keenest to start a business. But it is today’s twenty-somethings who are taking entrepreneurial ambition to new heights with close to one third now wanting to launch their own firm.

Many say that such leaps in entrepreneurial ambition are bound to happen at a time of recession as young people are forced into self-employment due to a lack of work. This is undoubtedly one cause but lack of credit and lower consumer confidence could also be seen as factors which actively discourage people from establishing their own business. That is precisely what another major survey found revealing a significant reduction in propensity to set up a business occurring after 2008 in America, France and Germany although interestingly not in the UK.

The same survey also found that while the proportion of people setting up in business out of necessity has risen during the recession, this motivation is still far outstripped by the proportion of people doing so because they want to take advantage of a commercial opportunity.

I think there is something far deeper happening to explain the rise of Generation Enterprise. We know from numerous surveys that millennials are far more tapped into the internet and make much wider use of the networks it provides. This explains a lot because the interactive web is transforming the way business is done in all sorts of ways but in particular it is making it far easier to set up and run a business.

Marketing no longer requires expensive advertising but can be done through a skilful use of peer-to-peer online networks, which now allow access to global markets. If you are selling intellectual content then its distribution is now immediate and cheap. If you are selling something that cannot be squeezed down a telephone line then a firm like Amazon or Ebay has established the technological infrastructure to allow you to arrange distribution painlessly and cheaply.

If you have a great idea for a product or a service but do not have the capital to develop it fully, or need help with some of the technical details, there is a sea of free advice out there available by tapping into the world of ‘open innovation’. Indeed doing this also helps you start your marketing process early, by getting your potential customers involved in the development of the product even before it goes on sale.

The world of finance is also opening up. No longer does a young entrepreneur have to face steely-eyed bankers or venture capitalists to get their plans off the ground. The rise of crowdfunding sites means small start-ups can now raise money online by enthusing hundreds or thousands of people with their plans.

With their much closer engagement to the internet, it is hardly surprising that younger people now see setting up a business as something far more natural and low risk than previous generations.

None of this is to urge complacency around the severe challenges many young people face. But the millennials are not a generation of hopeless cases stuck at home with their parents, rendered incapable by the very real challenges of finding work and housing. Support from government and other bodies may be needed in some areas but it must start with the recognition that today’s younger generation are more than ready to help themselves.

Adam Lent is the author of ‘Generation Enterprise’ published by the RSA this week

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• Old Git Tom

  The idiot-economist’s answer to mass, systemic unemployment. I’ll do your laundry, & you can do mine. We’ll swap paper IOUs, & get rich, rich! Sorry to disappoint all idiots, that only works for bankers, & it landed the world in the present catastrophic state. OGT

• stonecold90

  This article is just as insulting to young people as the posters for an entreperneurial event in sheffield that show Peter Jones, multi millionaire, laughing with the strapline “he did it, so can you”. Give us jobs not empty promises that risky decisions may pay off which they generally don’t.

• TomJB

  Well, you just get back to your XBOX and keep on waiting for Santa Claus to bail you out, the rest of us are going to provide for ourselves and our families, and sacrifice a little today for a better tomorrow, since that is what adults do.

• stonedwolf

  Even if you could get a job you can’t get a job at average UK wages you can’t afford a mortgage of the average UK house, so really what’s the point of bothering?

• And789

  Some young people are doing well. I know several personally both as a parent and an employer. But young people are having a rough time, because of my generation and older. We have taken everything and left them with very little.

  My vote is for the young every time.

• And789

  I disagree profoundly.

  Young people have a much harder struggle ahead of them than our generation.

  Did you pay university fees? Did you get a grant or a loan? Did you virtually have to be a millionaire in order to buy a home? Have you enjoyed the best of the NHS and the Public Sector conditions and pensions?

  I see very little evidence of the old caring about the young. They demonise them, take the best of the world’s resources and leave them with very little hope.

• And789

  My husband and I started our business over thirty years ago and we have been through several recessions. It is hard but it can be done. Wishing you all the best. A.